On the Calculation of Volume (Book IV)

Balle picks up her remarkable seven-part saga of a woman caught in a time loop with this stimulating account of a commune of people who are similarly stuck reliving the same day. Narrator Tara Selter, a Cologne-based rare book dealer who began repeating the 18th of November 1,891 days earlier, has been living in a vacant house in Bremen with three others she found over the course of her travels through Europe. They are joined by four more, including a couple, Peter and Sonia, who found each other after casually hooking up with a series of strangers, and whose love, now that they’ve committed to each other, unsettles Tara, who misses her husband and, given the fact that her body is aging, thinks increasingly of death. More people stuck in time loops find them, and as they hold meetings in which the agenda items range from household chores to philosophical questions, such as whether they should view their condition as an opportunity to help others, or if they’re “monsters” drawing too much on the world’s resources, Balle continues to expand on themes introduced in earlier entries. Near the end, a miraculous new development occurs. This will leave readers counting down the days to the next installment. (Apr.)